


Truth Telling

by laEsmeralda



Series: Temperance and other Virtues [2]
Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:07:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laEsmeralda/pseuds/laEsmeralda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are things a man ought not to lie to others about. But that list is shorter—by a considerable length—than the things he ought not to lie to himself about." --Captain Malcolm Reynolds</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth Telling

There are things a man ought not to lie to others about. But that list is shorter—by a considerable length—than the things he ought not to lie to himself about. 

I may have kept my preferences to my own discretion, but after my twelve-year-old self one day noticed, with particular interest, how the setting sun burnished my best friend’s body, I never once tried to fool myself about what I wanted. Which also never stopped me from noticing at other times, with particular interest, his sister’s equivalent, if variant, charms. 

And so I have appreciated a lifetime of having fewer limitations of taste than the average man. 

I knew within a day of meeting Simon Tam that he had willfully pulled the wool over his own eyes. Out of what, ambition? Fear? The misguided sense that not only acting the part of someone he isn’t, but believing the part, would protect River? Mei-Mei had to know, and she had to be exercising some unprecedented level of restraint not to say so. Especially not ever. Especially not when Simon’s oppressive protection pissed her so royally off. 

Admitting that I like a challenge a mite too well, I had to set aside any thought of action on my observations for a good long while. It bore consideration that a man’s mechanical preferences do not dictate his particular attractions. Only the most subtle of signs, read with perhaps too much optimism, gave me hope that I might be counted among those attractions. And besides, Kaylee deserved her chance. Which she has since had. Thoroughly. Repeatedly. 

Problem with my endearing grease-monkey is that though her love is forever, it is also a changeable weather and the storm inevitably moves on. These last few days she’s furrowed her brow over how to move Simon along out of her bunk, gentle but soon. Being a compassionate captain, I’ve decided to help her. Desperate confusion does not become Simon.

The gambit is difficult. Getting hurt is the easy part. Coming to Simon to extract a bullet, that’s so routine I’m fearful he might absent himself to whatever goes on in the far reaches of his mind. So, I have to keep it interesting. 

It is an opportunity in itself, visiting Shiv, and it’s been a long time. Too long, as it turns out.  
******

Simon’s jaw shifts as if he’s finally ready to speak. “Those,” he begins, “are human.” His eyes flick up. He waits for me to deny it. He looks furious.

I have to admit, the massive bruising and the bloody imprints trailing up from my knee are impressive from a purely spectator standpoint. But they hurt like a sonofabitch, especially on my groin and below my navel. Doc hasn’t seen that yet. I’ve only just dropped my trousers and slid, gingerly, onto the table still wearing my smallclothes, top and bottom. 

Simon measures the span of one bite with an implement that I think I’ve seen him also use to crank open ribs. I’m fairly sure I haven’t watched him crank open my ribs, but then, we’ve had some wild times on this table. “A man,” he says, conclusively, and then searches my face, his own expression emptying of hope. “What did you tell them… I… Mal, I forgive you, but what did you tell them?”

He thinks somehow that I’ve been tortured, and I didn’t see that coming. I grab his wrist. “No, Doc, it isn’t like that. Not at all.” I run my hand through my hair only partly for dramatic effect. He’ll believe me because no one would make up the next part. “We’ve got that doctor patient secret thing, right?”

Simon relaxes a little. “Of course. You can tell me anything, you should tell me anything that will help me treat you correctly.” He falls back into his comfort zone so readily he doesn’t even realize it.

I look at the light board just over his shoulder, not at him. “I paid a visit to a companion. He… got a little carried away. More than a little.” Truth-telling is easy when you want to do it. Still, I’m revealing something about myself that he so loathes about himself that he won’t even look it in the eye in the privacy of his own head. I find I don’t want to lose what little respect Simon might feel for me. Suddenly, I’m genuinely feeling shy and I start to move off the table. “It’s nothing, really, I just thought maybe you ought to give me a shot. Just in case.”

“Captain.” The word alone is a command in that tone. “Lie back. I need to examine you before I can decide how to treat you.” He’s all business again, but his hand trembles a little when he peels back my undershirt. The biting started just above my right knee and ended over my heart. Simon presses on the particularly ragged last mark. It makes me suck in a breath. Hard. “How did you stand this,” Simon says in a whisper. “Why?” 

Like most things, this one has more than one why attached. I’m not ready to tell him one of them. “Shiv, well, if you sign up with him, you follow where he leads or he doesn’t see you again.”

Simon quirks a corner of his mouth. “And this is a bad thing?”

“I can see how this would seem odd, especially with me avoiding pain most of the time. Could I have a drink of water? I’m finding I’m deeply parched.”

Simon shakes his head, bemused, as he pours the water. “Actually, you generally throw yourself in for a larger measure of hurt than you have coming. But this… this is exceptional.”

I prop up on my elbows and swallow down the whole glass in three gulps and lie back. “It wasn’t exactly painful in light of that blissroot juice I tossed back first.” 

“There are seven bite-marks. Why?” His tone does not invite prevarication.

I close my eyes. _A mouthful of flesh, first sucking, then biting down harder, and harder until the orgasm rips out of me. And then he deliberates and chooses another spot._ “One for each thing atoned for, and with each atonement… release. It’s how the potion works.” Simon smooths the gentlest fingers over the bite lowest on my belly and I have an unexpected deep flashback from that gorram far-jungle juice. Blood pumps hard into my cock. 

I’m forced at that to open my eyes, and Simon is pinking up fast. I hadn’t planned on a flashback. What’s furthermore to the point, I didn’t imagine being able at all to perk up. Fortunately for my last shred of dignity, I’m not naked. “I’m thinking we shouldn’t discuss this any further right now, Doc. And for the love of the ‘verse, please spare me the hallucinogenic substances lecture. It’s not something I do more than once a half-decade.” 

Simon’s flush fades just a little. “Which insanity don’t you engage in more than once a half-decade?” I read in his tone that he doesn’t really expect me to answer. He reaches for my waistband I reflexively block him. “Come now, _I_ don’t bite,” he says archly, like this royalty I once met. 

It‘s funny, especially coming from him, but I can’t seem to laugh. I let my hand fall back “I was just hoping for a moment or two to… compose myself.”

“Doctor,” he replies tersely and strips back the cloth. I mostly shut my eyes again in self-defense. I can barely see him through my lashes. If I hadn’t known this man for better than a year, I would think him dispassionate, simply observing the wayward patient’s damage. But I see him let slip relief that there are no bites where they shouldn’t be, potion or no, and then I fathom something spark up in him. 

I’d like to pride myself on that spark rising, but I think it’s about a long lack of any fuel, a flame stifled until allowed a sudden breath, and not my unique self after all. “Is there anything… anywhere else?” he asks.

“No.” I clear my throat softly. “Now that my humiliation is fully realized, could you finally see your way to prescribing me a shot and an ointment?”

“You need two stitches,” he says, surprisingly gentle, “and then a shot, and ointment, and banishment to your bunk for twelve hours. You are clearly unfit for duty.” 

I don’t argue. The bonus punishment is that after the stitches, he insists to apply the ointment himself and then has to paint some clear cover on over it starting back at the beginning. Simon’s touch at this point is near as inflaming as the flashbacks. I develop a strong belief during this process that the trickster demons said to extract payment for the use of blissroot are all well compensated by now. 

I am duly chastened by the time I restore myself to my trousers and head to my bunk. It has been, after all, an exhilarating but exhausting day. And the first part of the confession has been made for the worse or the better. Just not quite as I’d planned it.  
******

When, two days later, Simon asks me to let him check my progress, I shrug him off. A week later, he tells me to come to the infirmary so he can take out the stitches, and in the process of explaining that I picked them out myself yesterday, I make him so angry that he does not speak to me for a string of meals. Others are beginning the noticing part of the dispute.

“What’d you do to make Doc so pissed?” This from even Jayne, past whom you could drive a freight train of angst to which he’d take no notice. 

And it’s Jayne, so what you say and you don’t, well, you choose your poison. “Picked up some injuries by way of a spirited companion.” 

“Heh. Then he’s probably just jealous since Kaylee started the heave-ho. You had some shore leave comin’ and who the hell is he to judge it?” Jayne eyes me for a moment. “Sometimes you store up a need a long time, the remedy has to be rough.” He slaps me on the back and moves on to the cargo bay. I find myself wondering, oddly, how someone so unwise as Jayne can muster an insight like that. 

Fact is, it took three whole days for the blissroot to clear my system and the flashbacks to stop. And then, all I could think about in the aftermath was that night with Shiv. Companions design their services that way. That I know it doesn’t change the effect. You just have to ride it out, and it’s best not to be involving anyone you care about because you’re not yourself. It had been a long time, I hadn’t realized, and yes, the remedy was rough.

Besides, I had already reckoned that leaving Simon to himself was the best approach. I didn’t figure it would be a month, but I should have carried the one for stubbornness when I did the adding up. 

I’ve been hearing that he left Kaylee’s bunk soft and easy, and I can see him smile at her often. So that’s a good thing. And River keeps her miraculous silence. 

But Doc’s been losing a little weight picking over his food and leaving the table early. I’m beginning to grow concerned that he’s bound up so tight that I’ve undertaken a mission downright dangerous to his deep well-being. So I watch River. She does not seem concerned.

Canary singing in the coal mine aside, I am just deciding to go to him when he comes to me. I nearly have to sit down on account of what he says first.

“I’m sorry, Mal.” He’s as pale and contrite as if he has committed mortal sin and come to the shepherd to say so. 

I will not stutter. Captains do not stutter. So I keep silent.

“I judged you. You knew it. It compromised your care. A doctor should know better. I know better.”

“I’d very much rather not have this little talk in the passageway. Come in.”

He does, though he seems reluctant and I almost feel compelled to make a jest about lairs. But I don’t. Though I don’t keep much furniture, heart-to-hearts do happen with crew, so I make sure we can sit civilized, out of proximity to the bed. 

“You think that I wouldn’t let you look after me because you were judging me? When have you approved of anything I’ve done that has resulted in anyone getting hurt?”

His mouth works for a moment or two, and then he shuts it.

“Right.” I take a deep breath. “I didn’t want you to touch me. Last time I was on your table I nearly…. Well, I need to maintain some level of dignity in our professional dealings.”

“That was the blissroot. I understand.” His glances away and his face heats again.

I’m forced to fold my arms in true consternation. This is the young man whose pleasure the entire ship could hear on a regular basis for weeks thanks to Kaylee. And he’s blushing like a virginal child. I can’t stand it. “That potion was only part of the problem. Why do you think I took it?”

He looks at me then, and I can see burning curiosity, and that spark. 

“As the captain, I maintain a distance. My crew, despite my clear request that they don’t—with one well-earned exception I made for Zoe, play musical sexing in defiance of that directive. Which I choose to ignore. Meanwhile, I am who I am, and I have wants that need looking after. Even if I were inclined to fish off my own dock, there’s been no man aboard keen to agree with my tastes. And when I meet an interesting stranger somewhere, well, everything feels like a trap.”

“Isn’t it?” Simon tries to joke but we both know all too well the game of second-guessing, looking for the spy under every pretty guise.

“So the short of it is that Shiv and his potions get me through long periods of time, out in the black and planet-side, with no one to touch me.”

Simon looks down at his hands, which are clenched together. He loosens them. It’s the right moment. 

“Problem is, you touch me.” That brings Simon’s eyes up fast. “Since you came on board, I bleed for shorter lengths of time, which is a very good thing to my mind. But you touch me, and that’s become a problem to my abstinence.” I try to ease up the force of my voice for the next part. “Especially seeing that you despise slyness, it puts me in a particular discomfort.” 

“So you paid someone to hurt you.” It looks like Simon’s eyes are wet, but my cabin bulbs need changing so I count it an illusion. 

“I paid someone to give me release. He chooses the means and he’s never hurt me before.” This is when telling truth means telling the whole truth. “The thing is, I knew if I went to him, thinking about you the way I have of late, and discerning your judgment on the matter of men seeking each other out, he would find a cure for what ailed me. One way or another. And as for being troubled in a broader way, and asking for atonement on my regrets, when you stand in the way of a snowball, you ought to measure the mountain more carefully than I did.” I can’t help but touch the bruise over my heart. None of the marks have gone away yet. 

Simon just stares at me.

“It was a fortunate speculation. Shiv is a true-talent intuitive. I had an ignorant notion he might get a little wild with one of those floggers he has that he’s never used on me, give me a mark or two to pique your curiosity into a question.” In hindsight, my ignorance makes me chuckle. “I realized afterward that I hadn’t seen him in a year or better, with no other men during that time. An unlikely wise fellah told me recently that sometimes you store up a need a long time and the remedy has to be rough.” What I hold back is that the intensity of the pleasure during that session with Shiv had been well worth the pain, which is saying something.

“But the women…”

At that mention, I smell an open field not so long ago, Zoe above me against the stars, weeping and fierce, in her anger and grief like nothing so much as a wildfire devouring the grassland. It was something we never did through war or peace, something we’ll likely never do again, nor talk about with one another or anyone else. It was a sacred moment, not a way of life.

“I’ll allow it’s confusing to those who take a side. I’ve known for a very long time that I need both.” 

“You’re so sure about how I feel, I can’t understand why would you want me to know.” 

“I can bear up under your judgment—been doing that awhile now.” I reach out and tap his knee once, pulling my hand back right away, and then I have to stand up to pace. “What I can’t bear is to watch you hide from yourself. You’ve been through so much, you’ve denied too much to provide for others. It’s time to be yourself. In every way possible. Stay on this ship doctoring here only if that’s what you want. Eat what you want, sleep when you want, sex who you want, be free. I had to find a way to let you know, just on the outside chance my situation has any bearing on yours.” I’m careful not to call him out. “So now I have.”

He’s back to looking at his hands. Way I figure, I’ve done what I can. River is clearly not running around the ship screaming, so Simon must be steady with all this. And I’m feeling achy, not just where I’m hurt, but inside where I generally try not to dig around. It’s time to get him out of my bunk. Before I can conjure a good way to accomplish that, he asks a question.

“How did you know you were… when?” He falters.

“It was, as the mystics say, a moment of clarity. I was twelve. Girls had been interesting for about a year by then.” Simon raises an eyebrow. “I was precocious. But I didn’t say I had any, I just said they were interesting. And then one summer day we were all swimming naked and the light hit Jared just so and it broke my heart.” The vividness of the memory is painful in its euphoric detail.

“Did he feel the same?” 

“I’m within shooting distance of sure that he didn’t. I never said anything, of course. Never acted on it. But I knew. And I’ve never lied to myself about it.” I wait, hoping that he’s finding his own moment of clarity somewhere in the deep cold vault he keeps his past in. He doesn’t speak. “You can imagine that talk of this magnitude doesn’t come easy to me. I’ll be here for you if you need a place to talk, but right now, I need a little time alone.”

Simon nods. “Of course. Thank you. It’s a lot to think about.” 

“And that part about being free?”

“Yes?”

“That’s in every way except for regarding my orders.”

“Right, Captain.”

After he’s gone, I let my mind wander a spell into the past, but it comes back around to a young doctor who can’t get out of his own way. I had to make him leave, because a man like me can be only just so righteous before he has to balance the scales, and I had been nigh on to doing something that I didn’t think would go over well. 

At least I hadn’t lied to myself about my draw to Simon or how my motives are mixed. It had been a jolt when Shiv answered his airlock sporting jet black hair instead of copper, and blue lenses over his green. This is not a night for engagement with the gun hand but I can almost get there remembering the sweet shock of that moment. It’s a long while before I sleep.  
******

I’ve taken the opportunity to ride out alone, over the usual protests. 

This world is benign, if wilderness is ever that. Reavers never bother it, no point to raiding without a congregation of potential victims. The horse takes our time and I’m glad for the ease of it, the sun on my face. I’m not going far, you don’t have to go far to be alone out here. 

Even on shore leave, I nearly always sleep on board. Someone has to watch my girl while the others play, and they need to play so as to stay fit for the black. But we’re flush for once, and I can take a few days for me knowing Zoe’s got my back. 

It’s a powerful understatement to say we’re in for some changes. She’s started to show. Her radiant smile when she told me eased any cause I might have started to have for discomfort. Thank all that’s good in the ‘verse, something of Wash has survived. And the feeling is not solely out of benefit for Zoe. She’s not back to her old self, never will be I reckon, but her new self now smiles a lot like the old one used to. That woman is terrible fierce, but she deserves not to have to be. I want her to know I’ve got her back too, whether she decides to stay on Serenity or settle where she and the child can have a normal life. I’ll see to their coin, even if she fights me on it. Never been a more loyal second than her, she even put Wash after me, which is a regret I’ll always carry. It’s high time someone ‘sides her commanding officer or captain rated first. 

This is the life I have chosen. Still, the prospect of not seeing Zoe every day of that life makes me lonesome. It’s a terrible selfish thought, and I’ve been on this streak of truth telling, so I think it prudent to take myself off alone to ponder the solitary state, where shooting my mouth off has no downside.

The smallish cabin is a modern pod-house on the inside with some fine amenities, disguised with stone and thatch on the outside, and a genuine stream burbles through the paddock. There’s a tiny stable so snug and cute it makes me snort louder than the horse when it comes to sight. These cabins are scattered far and wide on this continent, not meant for more than one or two at a time. Peace, quiet, and nakedness. Just the medicine I need.

After I settle the horse, I strip down and head for the hot spring just a short throw from the front door. I haven’t had a soak in I don’t know how long. Shiv’s bites are finally healed and the hot water is nothing but pleasing. A bottle of dark ale and an open sky completes my contentment. It’s full dusk before my stomach makes me go inside to rustle up a meal. I don’t even remember going to sleep.  
******

I’m on my feet on the sun-warmed floorboards, gun in hand, when I hear the second whicker and my cobwebby brain gathers that the horses are acquainted. It doesn’t put me to ease. If there was big trouble, it’d be Serenity’s engines howling at my front door, but smaller trouble could ride in. I yank on my trousers one-handed, and with shoulder to the jamb, crack the door enough to peek.

Simon is just loosing his mount in the paddock. He shuts the gate and turns to me as I swing the door wide.

“Please tell me my crew is in one piece.” My heart thunders in my ears with fast awakening and worry.

He starts toward me with a half-smile, hands outspread. “Fine. Everyone’s fine. Jayne even found a shooting range so he and Zoe are in ‘hog heaven’ as he put it.”

I uncock the revolver and set it aside, suddenly over-aware of my shirtless state. There I go running a hand through my hair again. I silently vow not to play poker again until I master that twitch. “Then you’d best have a prime excuse to hand for intruding upon my peacefulness.”

“I hope you’ll find it so.” Simon stops about halfway to the door, reaches up and unbuttons his fancy shirt, slowly, steadily. He occupies a spot just outside the shadow of the peaked roof as it slices the early morning sun, and I come to see that Simon’s pristine skin, as it emerges, is covered with millions of baby-fuzzy-blonde hairs. They pick up the soft, clear light and he glows like those you hear claiming to be psychic say good people do. The shirt falls in a puff of dust on the path and Simon pays it no mind. 

There are lots of misunderstandings that occur in common human dealings, and I’ve taken my part in many. But I’m thinking that this is a clear, unequivocal sort of communication. So do other parts of me than just my brain. I feel that same peculiar welling, breaking, somewhere I can’t name, that happened so long ago in my unrequited boyhood awakening to the appreciation of a fine man.

Making it look easeful, he tugs off his boots and socks. I haven’t moved. Still watching me, perhaps a bit more warily, he unbuttons his trousers. In contrast to his smooth chest, below his navel, dark hair reasserts itself, a tease, a promise. He pauses, trousers clinging stubbornly to his hips. “Have I erred, Captain?” he asks, his voice silky but just hovering on the edge of fear. 

“I dropped off the captain in the woods a few miles shy of here,” I manage to reply, letting the doorjamb do most of the work of keeping me standing. 

“Oh, I hope not. I’m here for just plain Mal and for Captain Reynolds both,” he says, definitive-like.

The part of me that would have previously enjoyed waiting here, making him cross those last five steps on his own, just died of spontaneous combustion. 

When my mouth slides against his, I’m afraid I’ll shock him into retreat with my hunger but I can’t slow down. His trousers glide off as my hands trace down along the upper curve of his ass. His tongue meets mine and both his hands grip my skull, pulling me down hard. Apparently, he is not a frightened rabbit after all.

Our first time, then, is in the grass in front of that nicely appointed cabin with its big bed and sumptuous sheets. 

I regain notice of the outside world and realize that both horses are watching us, which catches me powerful grin-worthy. My left arm is trapped between Simon’s thighs, and his taste dances on my tongue. I think I’m still in his mouth. _Ta ma de_ , he actually swallowed. 

I stroke along his waist up to his ribs. As he releases me and I roll to my back, he props himself on his folded arms on my chest. In my head, and only there, I make some trite comparisons between his eyes and the cloudless sky, which I can blame on the endorphins. The grass is a little damp and a little scratchy, and I don’t care, which I can also blame on the endorphins. 

“How’s about we move inside?” I murmur.

He smiles down at me, and it’s like no other smile he’s ever given me or anyone else in my experience.

“If you expect any more fun out of me over the course of the day, you’d best not look at me like that.” 

Simon frowns a little. I realize he could so easily mistake my meaning. We’re in a place of delicate understanding.

“I’m trying to tell you that smile is like a hand down my britches and you should choose your timing very carefully.”

He instantly brightens again. “You aren’t wearing any.” 

That makes me laugh, in the course of which, I find my arms wrapping around him. 

“I know you think I’m on the rebound, confused, and you have to be careful with me. I’m an adult, Mal. Let’s just have fun. I don’t have expectations.”

I can’t help but sigh. How can a man go from triple lockdown to springing open without breaking something in the process? “I think you’re discovering country heretofore designated on your map by the phrase, ‘Here be dragons,’ and I should treat that with some respect.”

He studies me for a moment or two. “I can appreciate that logic,” he says, finally. “I should tell you that both River and I tested at the top of the resilience scale. To your point, I adapt quickly to new facts.” 

“I see.” I seem to have developed a need to examine the unique loveliness of Simon’s eyes. Those heavy brows have a way of contrasting with the startling blueness, so as you’d never mistake him for feminine. But I am listening, I swear it. 

“Before, you spoke to me of freedom, so in that same vein, could you take a rutting day off from protecting all of us and just be that man who was strong enough to tell me how much he wanted my touch? Right after he had what, seven orgasms in one day. With an expert?”

Eight. Not counting the one by myself. But I sense I shouldn’t tell him that. Yet. 

“Well, I suppose I have to trust that you know what you’re doing.”

Later, we’ve had food and water, a soak in the hot spring, and enough recovery to seek other sustenance. 

I very much enjoy laying him out on his back and testing how to best to touch him everywhere. He indulges me with great patience. 

When I’ve taken every drop of that patience, and he’s caught his breath at last, he asks me very nicely to fuck him. I very nicely decline. “That’s a dish best served hot, not spent,” I tell him, brushing hair off his sweaty forehead. “That’s for later.” Denial doesn’t mean virginity, and I should account for the correct amount of experience. “There’ve been others?”

He hesitates, then shakes his head. 

“Battery-driven?”

His eyes widen and I have to laugh. “What? Two months with Kaylee and no mandatory vibrational experiments? Okay, I translate that horrified look as a ‘no.’ So truly, this is not the time.” 

He looks so disappointed, mischief wells up in me and bubbles over. It is, after all, an essential quality of myself that doesn’t stand for being repressed long. 

“I’m going to lay down the law and absolutely insist that if anything not saddle-broke gets ridden out here, it’s me. No exceptions. Are we clear?” I oh so carefully commit the priceless, once-this-lifetime look on his face to memory. 

He swallows convulsively. “You _bottom_?” 

I don’t know whether to feel pride or shame that he asks it that way, with such shock, though it’s a relief that he’s not ignorant of the variations. “Have I not made it abundantly clear to you that I _everything_?” 

That brings out a laugh. His eyes really sparkle to excess when he laughs. Not that I find myself minding.

“Mal, I have to confess that in the infirmary, putting in your stitches, I was so turned on, I thought I was going to come against the table.”

“I always suspected you got off on causing me hurt,” I chide. 

“That’s the thing. I don’t. I always feel scared when you’re hurt. I can’t distance myself from it. You’re the toughest man I’ve ever met, bar none. Jayne has his own brand of tough but yours goes deeper. Every time I have to face a new wound you bring me, it’s like being shown the ultimate mortality, that no one’s invulnerable. I thought it was madness that you’d let this… this person do _that_ to you. To treat your flesh that way… on purpose. You let him mark you like he owned you.” He looks pissed all over again.

“I’m failing to see in what way does this bear on you getting riled up in your nethers.” 

The angry look fades back. “Your response to me. You got hard when I touched you. You couldn’t stop it.”

“Not the first time,” I reply as matter of fact as I can. “Just the first time you noticed.” 

And then his mouth is back and he’s rolling me. I’ve not come a second time and the feel of him sliding hard against me is nearly enough to bring me. 

But he pulls away and ducks down to my right knee where he places a soft, open kiss, and then sucks and licks me so gently, like he means to administer an antidote to the violence of my encounter with Shiv. He does this again and again, tracing the faded marks up my body, catching my nipple last of all, lingering. I can feel my own readiness dripping and cooling on my stomach. I reach for his hand and guide it there. “Take this and lube up. You have to hurry or it’ll dry.” 

It’s really not enough, but apparently he’s contributing as well, and he manages much more smoothly than I would have thought. As always, there’s a sense of shock, insult to the system, but it’s tempered by Simon’s face and the shudder that goes through him as he seats deep inside me. 

I hadn’t wanted Shiv this way that night, no matter the illusionary resemblance. Of course, he knew that without me saying. So it’s been since I’d seen him last year that I’ve let anyone have me, and maybe I’m a little more vulnerable than I’m accustomed to being in the heat of the moment, and that’s what makes it feel so gorram right. 

“You okay?” Simon asks.

“Why? I’m fine.”

“That sound you just made was… well...”

I hadn’t realized I’d made any noise. “Wasn’t pain,” is all I say.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible for his pupils to dilate more, but they do. He reaches over and fumbles in a drawer, coming up with a spanking new bottle of lube. 

“Oh, hell,” I say, sheepish. Of course a fancy hotel would think of that.

“For what I’m about to do to you, you’ll need it,” Simon threatens, pulling out from me a bit and squeezing the bottle from a foot high onto us both. When he slams home, the world flashes white for a second.

“I don’t think I said earlier,” I gasp, “but you’ve got one inspiring example of male prowess there.” It isn’t an empty compliment or simple dirty talk. Simon is gorgeous in form and function and I’m compelled to tell him. No wonder we all had to stuff pillows over our heads to shut Kaylee out. The girl does appreciate fine workmanship.

He rests along me and works me with his whole body, belly stroking me, feet tangling with mine. “I prefer yours,” he says against my jaw. “Oh, I wanted to touch it that night. Inexplicably shy as you turned, it was right there, begging me, dark and hot and smooth. Not surprisingly, it spoke to me with your voice, ‘Come on, pretty boy, touch me and find out what you want to know.’ But I couldn’t.” 

In a haze, I try to remember if I’ve ever called him ‘pretty boy’ to his face. I decide to save apologies for later and opt for more truth. “Afterward, you know, I set a record. I came thinking of you for the ninth time in half a day.” 

He stops in mid thrust, and I realize that Simon just did the math and then also realized what else I had said. His eyes lock on mine. “But you were with Shiv.”

“I was with you.” I pause to let it sink in. “Funny thing, he’s a redhead with green eyes, nice build, about your height, given to wearing Ashrazan tunics for easy access—no buttons, you see. Answered his door a dead ringer for you, hair, eyes, jaw, all crisp white shirt, brocade vest, and attitude—triple set of buttons. And I hadn’t drunk any potions yet. I swear to all the gods that might be throughout the ‘verse, Doc, it was you made me come all those other times too.”

He looks fiercely joyful, and then it fades. “But I would never hurt you like that, even if you asked me.” 

“With Shiv, you get only what you ask for, even if you don’t ask out loud. Apparently, I needed it.”

“I wouldn’t even if you thought you needed it.” His fingers tug my hair, chastising in his own soft way. “But I need to know… about the seven.” 

Not being ready to name names like I did in the blissroot ceremony, I nevertheless feel I owe him some part of this truth too. “I caused seven wrongs this span I couldn’t ignore, including deaths of those as didn’t deserve it, and other things not exclusive to death. Right reasons don’t matter, just the doing leaves a mark.” And twice, I had to see Zoe look at me that way that I hope to never see again.

He nuzzles my neck. I think I know what he’s wanting to ask, but won’t.

“Once I felt purged, I asked for something for me. To be with you just once, like I had imagined it would be—very like we were this morning as a matter of fact. Only then could I face you and do what was needful without taking anything for myself. Or so I opined at the time. Until I got up on your table and you touched me.” 

Simon begins moving again. “Mal,” he breathes in my ear. He locks onto my mouth and doesn’t let off until I’ve groaned out my release. And then he bites my shoulder, as he rocks his last few thrusts into me.  
****** 

“You realize that you’ve tipped off everyone to the both of us,” I say, mildly, watching the firelight dance on the ceiling along with the colors of sunset.

“Not if you don’t want them to know about you. My note should cover it.” He traces his own territorial marking on my shoulder with a careful finger. I can tell it isn’t much of a bite, mostly symbolic. I find I’m partial to it.

Then the data processes. I’m slow to follow, probably not far from drifting off to sleep. “Note. You left a note.”

“Yup. ‘Gone fishing.’ Which doesn’t mean the fish wants to get caught,” he hastens to say. “It’s no problem, I’m set to head back yet tonight, it’s less than an hour ride. Either way, I’m not hiding any more.”

That wakes me up. I roll clever, resilient Simon beneath me. “There’s no manner in which you’re leaving here until I’m damn good and ready to go home. Which is not for two more days. That ought to clear up any uncertainty anyone might have developed on the matter of either of our preferences.”

“I’m not asking for steady, you know.” He smiles up at me reassuringly.

I’m finding him increasingly charming. “You keeping your options open?”

“Aren’t you?”

I have to kiss him at that. “I’m content to see what develops. Take is as it comes.”

He studies me. “It’s a big step to show your cards to the others. You’re sure?”

“Are you? I figure I don’t care for any undignified sneaking into your bunk or you into mine. I’ve come to the realization that at my age and station, discretion is overrated. After all, I’m captain. Them as don’t like it can lump it. Long as you’re shiny with it.” 

And there’s that smile again. I’m already planning ways to see a whole lot more of it.  
******


End file.
